Humans mostly remember the place where they lost their virginity, but we never suspected the same about animals. Recently a new study has found that African cotton leafworm moths also remember the plant species on which they mated for the first time. They also keep returning to same plant species to mate again.
The Spodoptera littoralis or the African cotton leafworm moth is an inhabitant of Africa and some parts of Europe. It feeds on 40 different species of plants.
The African cotton leafworm moths have a natural preference for cotton plants. Therefore, to check that if it prefers other plants species, scientists performed series of experiments in which they had the moths copulate for the first time on cabbage leaves. These experiments were performed to see for the second mating and egg laying whether the moths showed preference to cabbage over cotton. The results turned out to be positive.
Two days old, moths were studied closely and their behavior was noted, as these moths were not able to distinguish between different leaves. At first, the scientist compared two plant cotton and cabbage. The moths showed attraction towards cotton and they ignored the cabbage plant. Then they were left free to mate in an enclosure with either cotton plants, cabbage plants or no plants.
Later the preferences of moths were tested by allowing the access of cotton and cabbage plants to the females on the verge of laying eggs. At that time, the males were put inside a wind tunnel that floated female moth pheromone towards them.
The moths that have mated on cotton plant or without any plants preferred cotton. Whereas, the moths that had lost their virginity on cabbage plants selected the cabbage plant.
Moreover, it is also assumed that these moths will always select cabbage plants in the future.
